From the desk of the Tar Heel disciple:
January 27, 2026 (#69)
The Espousal of the Blessed Virgin Mary with St. Joseph
In many places during the last 500 years, the Catholic Church celebrated the espousal (or betrothal) of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Saint Joseph on January 23rd. Its purpose was to commemorate their marriage which, in keeping with Jewish law and tradition, took place at that time in two stages: the first, the betrothal, officially establishing the contract of marriage, when the consent of the couple for marriage was exchanged, and the second, usually about a year later, when the bride was brought to the house of the groom. The Scriptural witness of this process enables us to understand how Mary was married to Saint Joseph but had not yet come to live together at the time she conceived the Infant Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit (see Matthew 1). While ever maintaining as dogma the perpetual virginity of Mary, the Church has also always defended the reality of her marriage with St. Joseph.
In the early fifteenth century, a petition to institute this feast was submitted to the Council of Constance by the chancellor of the University of Paris, without success. The first papal approval of the feast was given, in 1517, to the Nuns of the Annunciation. After this, over the ensuing years, various nations, regions, dioceses, and religious communities petitioned for the same privilege, sometimes receiving it, sometimes not. The feast was never universally observed and was even removed from local liturgical calendars in the liturgical reform of 1961. In 1989, the Oblates of Saint Joseph, a religious community of priests and brothers founded in the nineteenth century, were granted permission to observe the day as the “Feast of The Holy Spouses Mary and Joseph.”
Despite the obvious reluctance of the Church to extend this feast universally, perhaps the Feast of the Holy Family, placed on the General Roman Calendar in 1921 by Pope Benedict XV, might be recognized, at least in part, as an affirmation of the true marriage of Mary and Joseph. Nevertheless, in our time, when our contemporary culture’s understanding of marriage has taken such a deviant turn, divorce and cohabitation are rampant, and the number of celebrations of the Sacrament of Marriage among baptized Catholics has plummeted, perhaps the observance of this feast might provide the Church and her ministers further opportunities to give witness to the Church’s perennial understanding of marriage and strengthen the witness of Catholic married couples.
